


Beginnings

by unsettled



Category: The Long Firm
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:56:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Get on the fucking boat, Lenny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beginnings

The silence is awkward – is more than awkward, is painful. Harry starts to speak; doesn't. Len opens his own mouth; closes it again. The sun is too hot, too bright, and he has to squint to see Harry, so he doesn't, keeps his gaze low, and of course that's the reason, he's not trying to hide anything. Of course not. 

The moment something could have been said comes, passes, unremarked upon. Harry holds out his hand for a parting handshake, and this … this is all it's boiled down to, in the end. The distance stretches between them, Len's fear eating at the return to friendship they'd begun at the pool. Harry does everything better than he does, lives better than he does, and he's tired of it. He's tired of being less. He's tired of being a bystander in his own life. 

He's protested every step of this trip, made his displeasure plain vocally and through prolonged sulks, refusing to share in Harry’s enthusiasm. Protested, and fought, and resented every single step, yet letting himself be dragged along, letting Harry decide for him. Letting himself pretend he wants nothing more than a return ticket to a cold, lonely flat and a miserable job and a hole where his future is. 

And Harry's deciding for him again. Deciding on goodbye, deciding to let Len go, and Len – he - 

He wants to do something he will remember for the rest of his life. 

When Harry relaxes his hand, starts to draw it away, Len takes a deep breath that's half a gasp, and tightens his fingers. Steps up, onto the boat, unsteadily. "I can write from anywhere," he says. 

Harry gives him that look, the self satisfied approving one that tells him he's done something right, for once, and pulls him closer. Lays his hand along Len's hip and kisses him, kisses him like Len’s wanted for _years_ , kisses him like they're all alone and there’s a bed nearby, utterly ignoring Steve, as Len cannot, and he blushes when they pull apart. Harry smiles at him. 

"So you can," he says, and Len wonders if it's a promise. He knows what he will write, though.

The story might as well be finished here – let Harry become a figure of legend and myth, larger than life – yet no story could match his life, could be larger. Let there be no end to this story except for 'and then he vanished, and there is no more to know, only to be guessed'. It's a fitting end for the life Harry Starks has lived. Let that story, the one he will write, be ended here. But not Harry’s story. Not his own story. Not, possibly, maybe, hopefully, their story. 

Because their story begins here.


End file.
